Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Out of Israel: Bin Laden Showed Up Classic Lie that ‘Poverty Breeds Terrorism’

Osama bin Laden Showed Up Classic Lie that ‘Poverty Breeds Terrorism’

Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was born in 1957 into a rich Saudi family, inherited $300 million at the age of 11, and was killed in his mansion, belying the myth that poverty breeds terrorists.

He was killed on the same day that it was announced that Hitler had committed suicide, one day earlier in 1945, and on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

His father was a contractor who adhered to fundamentalist Islam. Bin Laden grew up surrounded by material wealth – crystal chandeliers, gold statues and Italian tapestries, McClatchy newspapers reported.

At the age of 11, he inherited a fortune estimated to be worth $300 million after his father died in a helicopter crash. His exposure to radical Islam began after he shunned Western universities and studied at a university in Saudi Arabia, where he learned from Muslim preachers that following strict Islam was a defense against corruption and Western decadence.

At the age of 18, he married a 14-year-old girl, the first of four wives. In 1988, he founded Al-Qaeda, an Arabic word that literally means “the base."...